Sed Lex
by Calyn
Summary: "You will be silent and sit still and listen, Miss Ringwald, as I explain why your petition is both fruitless and useless. You do not know what mercy means, and actions have consequences." (Water Walker, Ted Dekker) (CCDE #4)
**Misdefinition and illogic are some of my pet peeves, and make no mistake, this is ALL spitefic. Every bit of it is either literally a straight-up rant or an expansion of the CCDE mythos.**

 **Jenn, Jade, and the CCDE are mine, the rest is Dekker's, and I've no interest in owning the smallest iota of it, for reasons that will be made abundantly clear.**

 **The first three paragraphs are adapted slightly from the book. With thanks to JW for beta work.**

* * *

"By putting my mother in prison, you only tempt me to think that she offended me, which might put me in my own prison, don't you see? I've let that go. We've had enough offense and punishment in this family to last a lifetime. Please, don't try to make us suffer any more."

Olivia stares at me. If I'd not been indifferent to such things now, her unblinking gaze might have unnerved me. She opens her mouth, then shuts it again, and frowns as she looks down.

Perhaps the truth of my words will not connect with her now. No matter. In truth, only I have the key to any prison in my mind, though I don't want to see my mother suffer.

There is a soft _thump_ as Olivia places one hand on the table. She raises her eyes to meet mine once more—but now they are filled with fire, smoldering with suppressed feeling, blazing with anger. "It is _not_ about suffering, Miss Ringwald."

That bothers me. "My name is—"

"Your _name_ ," she says very precisely, "is _Alice Ringwald_ , as per the legal documents of the United States. Now that you are no longer an infant and have come into your legal majority, you may alter your name at your discretion, as is your right under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, as this operation is concerned with current law, I will address you as Miss Ringwald until such time as a judge grants your petition."

"But that—"

" _You will be silent_ ," she practically spits out, slamming her fists on the table with a bang. My mother gasps. "You will be silent and _sit still_ and _listen_ , Miss Ringwald, as I explain why your petition is both fruitless and useless."

And suddenly I can neither speak nor move. It is as though my body has ceased to work.

"Item one," says Olivia in a cool, detached voice that I have never before heard her use. "Catherine Miller, alias Kathryn Lowenstein, _has_ indeed offended you, Miss Ringwald, as has her partner. They have also offended John and Louise Clark, Robert Lowenstein—called Bobby—the State of Louisiana, and the United States of America. Catherine is at the very least guilty of kidnapping, child abuse, child endangerment, and conspiracy to commit fraud. Wyatt is guilty of nearly the same, as well as alcohol-related offenses. To turn a blind eye to this would be unjust in the extreme to these others. Their offenses and the consequences thereof do not cease to have ever existed simply because you overlook them, and you have no right to demand that justice be denied merely to spare your _feelings_. We do not let criminals walk free just because their brainwashed victims asked nicely. We are the Confedera—Federal Bureau of Investigation, of the Department of _Justice_ , not the Communal Happytime Gathering of Fuzzy Feelings, and we do not even consider requests that put others in danger.

"Item two, Miss Ringwald, you yourself have declared that only you hold the keys to your 'prison.' If that is true, you can simply choose to not let Catherine and Wyatt's sentences affect you in the same way you believe you have chosen not to let their crimes affect you. If you cannot, then perhaps you are not quite as right as you think you are.

"Item three, Miss Ringwald, all the offense and punishment in your _'family'_ has happened to all the wrong people. It's high time that changed. If you suffer because your mother and father are to be justly rewarded for their wrongdoing, kindly remember they are _not_ the victims—they are the perpetrators. They brought this on themselves.

"Item four, you are not the arbiter in this matter, Miss Ringwald. If you wish to drop charges, you may do so. However, the State will not drop them, and neither will John and Louise Clark. You have already caused them a great deal of pain by insisting on remaining in Louisiana with your captors. You will still be subpoenaed and required by law to testify.

"Item five, Miss Ringwald, you are quite transparently the victim of both brainwashing and Stockholm Syndrome, for reasons which are obvious and make your goodwill automatically suspect.

"Item six, you have made no overtures of forgiveness to Ezekiel Gunner. Even if he were not guilty of the Lowensteins' offenses—and more—making it impossible for us to let him go, you have given no hint of desiring this, Miss Ringwald. One wonders if your vaunted forgiveness is limited to those you care about. Such hypocrisy.

"Item seven, you have changed in a most abominable way since meeting that Stephen Carter—oh yes, I know all about your _Outlaw_. I know all his story, where he came from, and why he is not the force of good he thinks he is. I know all about Austin and Christy and the mental hospital—but that is for another time. You are now arrogant. You presume to render judgement on matters that do not concern you, and yet you care nothing for justice. You believe your new way is right, but it is not, because let me tell you, Miss Ringwald— _you do not know what mercy means_.

"Oh, you think you know, but you are wrong, Miss Ringwald. Mercy is not a passivity through which you take no notice of the wrong done to you. It is not an absence of punishment. It is _misericordia_ , the simplicity of feeling another's misery with your own heart and acting to alleviate it as though it were your own misery. It is all too frequently misunderstood these days as 'letting people do whatever they want because stopping them would make them feel bad and no one should ever have to feel bad.' It is seen as a means by which we affirm people in their sin, refusing to decry their actions as wrong for fear of their emotions, as though their human feelings here on Earth are more important than their soul's eternal home. And it is wrong. One can both love and be merciful whilst allowing justice.

"If Love is a fire, and Mercy an ocean, then the sword of God's Justice is tempered in that fire, and quenched in that ocean. But that sword is not melted by the flames, nor dissolved by the water. Mercy and Love make Justice ring true; they do not destroy it, nor make it irrelevant.

"You, Miss Ringwald, would have me believe that this is God's desire, that we absolve without punishment all evil that is done to us and to others. But if our purpose in life is to know, love, and serve God, and to strive our best to be like Him in all things, including Love, what then does this say of God Himself? If we are to absolve evil because it is His way of Love, does that not mean that He also absolves it, and at a far greater level? In fact, does that not imply that God ignores all evil and dispenses no punishment whatsoever, out of what you erroneously call _love_? But then He would not be God, for He would not be good, and neither would we. After all, why bother striving to be virtuous, if we are already assured of forgiveness and an absence of just punishment?

"You claim to have forgiven those who kidnapped and abused you, Miss Ringwald, and are arrogantly demanding they not be justly punished. I wonder...would you say the same of Stalin? Diocletian? Hitler? Nero? For if you insist that justice does not apply to Catherine and Wyatt because you 'love' them, you have said it also does not apply to these others because God 'loves' them, and they must be allowed to go their way with no punishment or condemnation.

"A five-year-old knows better than you, Miss Ringwald. He knows that if he takes a crayon and draws on the wall, he will get a spanking, even though his mother and father love him and forgive him. We discipline our children because it is for their own good—and to will another's good is the very definition of love. It does _not_ mean we allow people to do whatever they so please without threat of punishment because oh no, that would give them feelbadz. It does not mean we want people to feel good. If every relative of every victim of a serial killer forgave her without exception, she would still be called to answer for her actions no matter how awful the trial might make her feel.

"For actions have consequences, Miss Ringwald, and forgiveness for those actions does not abrogate the just punishment attached thereunto. That punishment may come in this life, it may come in the next, but it _will_ come to all. That is Truth, and it is neither dictated nor altered by emotional reasoning.

"In sum, your emotions have no bearing on the path of Justice, nor is Justice superseded by Mercy or Love. And that, Miss Ringwald, is why your request cannot and _will_ not be granted, no matter how much it may _hurt your feelings_."

Her tirade finished, Olivia leans back and stares coldly at me.

"Dura lex, sed lex, Miss Ringwald. The law is hard, but it is the law. If you desire to ignore the wrong done to you and others, and to pretend the cross of injustice is all made of flowers and false peace and has no weight on your back, well and good. But _you will not_ force us to do the same. We will carry that heavy burden of wood and metal when you refuse, and the world will be far better for it."

She stands, gathers her things, and walks to the door. At the threshold, she turns.

"You may speak and move. Goodbye, Miss Ringwald, and may our next meeting be in court. Hopefully you will have knocked some _sense_ into yourself by then."

And the door slams behind her.

* * *

If someone had been watching her as she left the Lowenstein house, they would have seen FBI Agent Olivia Strauss stride briskly down the path, get into the black FBI car waiting there, and drive off, no doubt to attend to more official business.

But they would have been wrong.

The car's windows were tinted dark, and the blonde teenager waiting in the passenger seat was invisible from the outside. Olivia drove them a short way into the trees, then swung the car around and parked, hidden from view.

The blonde girl looked over at her. "So, how'd it go?"

Olivia shook her head vigorously, and her body _shimmered_. Her hair flew about, settling into long brown waves as her eyes flipped back to hazel. She grew a bit taller and her proportions changed, edging more towards curvy. As her black uniform jacket, badge, and jeans appeared, the lines on her face faded into twentysomething smoothness.

"About as well as could be expected for a Subversive Revision," said Jenalyn Winchester, Despatch Officer of the Confederation of Crappy Denouement Eliminators. She counted the actions on her fingers. "Peoplespoke her to shut up and sit still, told her off for the bullhonkey, would probably have to Subvert Olivia again if they actually went to trial." She shrugged. "Aliceden walks out three sentences later, though, and the books ends four pages after that with some nauseatingly sappy Emoshunz, so we probably don't have to worry. Prep for automobile disbandment."

Both women leaned forward into a crouch.

" _Evano._ "

The car vanished, dropping them a foot and leaving them standing in the forest.

Jenalyn stood and stretched. "Good _Brassica_ , it's good be back to normal height. Why is it always me that gets assigned the Subversions, Jade?"

Jade Hunter—fellow Despatch Officer and frequently paired with Jenalyn—smirked, her grey eyes dancing. "Probably because you're the hominangelis, Jenn. Stop complaining about discomfort you don't feel, nerd."

Jenn sighed in mock exasperation. "Ah, the pains of being such as I am. But then you'd know all about that, immunila."

"Hey, hey, hey now," Jade chided, elbowing her partner. "You know perfectly well that we all get that de facto, the only thing that makes me special is that sum es fluenta in Latin."

There was a snort. "That wasn't even Latin, noob."

"I'm feeling lazy, sue me. _Anyway_ , how'd it go?"

"And I already told you. As well as can be expected. _Ugh_." Jenn flopped to the ground, lying supine, mindless of the damp and the mud. "I hate people who obstinately misdefine mercy and love. And I _hate_ going into Dekker universes."

Jade sat down beside her. "Why?"

"They're all _wrong_. Well no, I take that back, the Circle is pretty decent and I don't mind hanging out there every so often, but most of the other ones. And especially the Outlaws. It's the pseudo-Gnosticism—or is it Catharism? and Emoshunal New Ageism, plus I think a nice dose of Arianism and maybe Pelagianism... _gah_."

Jenn stuck a hand up in the air and flapped it around.

"You know what I mean. The whole 'this body is just a useless costume' and 'the only thing that matters is your spirit' and 'just look inside yourself' and 'mercy abrogates justice'. That stuff. But most importantly the 'all you need is loooooove', like deciding to forgive someone will suddenly make all your problems totally vanish instantly, and fix _their_ problems too. He has such a bone to pick with Christianity, and it _shows_. And then the inwritten heresy twists the universe in all these ways...subtle ways, yeah, but still twisted. Like walking into a room where gravity is only ninety-five percent of normal, or a world where everyone has the same color hair or their ears face backwards. Like the Uncanny Valley or Camazotz. Everything is just _skewed_ a bit off the axis of truth."

"A skewniverse," Jade mused.

Jenn sat up. "Yes! That's perfect! And going into a skewniverse always gives me this cold shivery-shuddery feeling, like ants crawling down my spine, and it _never goes away_. It makes me feel perpetually just a little off balance, and I don't. Like. It."

"Come to think of it," said Jade slowly, "I think I feel that too. I thought it was just the aftereffects of the unmagic I used on Gretchen. You're right, it's not at all comfortable. But I thought hominangeles didn't feel discomfort?"

"Not since joining the CCDE, no, but I still have intuition and stuff. And this is part of that. I can suppress it if I really try, or if my feelings are strong enough, like when I was yelling at Aliceden. The only thing that makes it go away completely, though, is getting out of the skewniverse."

Jade got to her feet and offered Jenn a hand. "Then let's do that. And let's start reporting skewniverses to Analysis Sector as we find them, so they can add the info to reports and other Despatch officers can be forewarned."

Jenn took Jade's hand and stood. "I like that idea. Will you, or shall I?"

"Definitely you. Wings of Warping, if'n you don't mind."

"Got a hankering to fly, do you?" Jenn grinned. "Get over here, you goof."

Jade wrapped herself around Jenn and locked her arms and legs together. "Whatever you say, Aunt Jenalyn."

"You know I hate it when you call me that."

"But you _are."_

"Bah. Hold tight, nerd kid."

"As if I didn't know!"

"Yeah, yeah. Ready?"

"Any time you are."

"Excellent."

Light _blazed_ from Jenn, streaming from every inch of her skin, bleeding through her clothes, sparking golden in her eyes, throwing the trees and grass into shadows so sharp it seemed they could slice steel. Wings the color of midnight and sunrise and noonday sky unfolded behind her, shot through with stars and cut from the very fabric of the universe. They flapped once, twice, thrice...and then, with a sonic whisper that was not quite a sound, both officers vanished.

All that remained of their presence was a patch of matted grass, a string of tire tracks quickly melting into the mud, an eighteen-year-old girl who was perhaps not quite as sure of herself as before...

..and a skewniverse that tilted just a bit more toward truth.

* * *

 **How do I have issues with thee, let me count the ways...oh wait. I just did. Mission accomplished.**


End file.
